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Earth, and her waters, and the depths of air-
Comes a still voice :-Yet a few days, and thee,
The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all its course.

Nor yet in the cold ground
Where the pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And the sluggish clod which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon.

The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place

Shalt thou retire alone,-nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre.

The hills,

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between ;
The venerable woods; rivers that move

In majesty; and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste,

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.

The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

The globe, are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings,-yet, the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.

7. So shalt thou rest; and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee.

8.

As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age, cut off,
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those, who, in their turn, shall follow them.

9. So live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves

To the pale relams of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.-Bryant.

William Cullen Bryant, by whom Thanatopsis was written, has been justly styled the Thompson of America. His poetic effusions are deeply

imbued with the pathos of nature. The New Yorker, of April 16, 1836, contains a valuable article on American poets, in the course of which, it is truly observed, that "Thanatopsis, the most beautiful among his productions, though breathing the same spirit, we consider superior to the poetry of Thompson, in the richness of its coloring, and the grouping of its objects; the imagery is concentrated and finished, chaste and smooth. The poet, while standing by the grave of humanity, illumines its darkness with the splendors of the universe, reconciles us to it by displaying its various inhabitants, and closes the solemn sepulchral hymn, if so we may call it, by warning us, in the language of poetic and moral eloquence, to prepare for the final enemy

As one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

Thanatopsis should be read or recited on rather a low key, with slow time, and long quantity.

THE EFFECTIVE PREACHER.

1. The preacher's manner of speaking is to be cultivated; the voice, attitude, action, expression. There is great power in these. Whitfield may be adduced as an illustration of the wonderful power of manner. He studied manner until he became a perfect master of it. In most cases, if not all, assiduous cultivation and practice are necessary to secure a significant and forcible manner.

2. Yet most seem to think, that the power of address, if it comes at all, must come without labor, come spontaneously. If God intended that any should be orators, he caused them to be born orators; a perverse and wilful error, persisted in against nearly all the gathered light and remonstrance of past and present example.

3. All the finished and potent speakers of ancient time, became such, by an attention to the manner, a toil in practice, which ended only with life; and still we will have it, that we can perform successfully all the high functions of the orator, on the most thrilling and momentous themes, with the untutored voice, and the clumsy joints, and the unpracticed limbs of nature, corrupted and made worse by that second nature, early habit.

4. It is by this heedless, lazy throwing of this whole great concern on the drifting tide of chance, that we come so far short in the use of one of the mightiest means of influence and of good of which God has made us capable. It is indispensable, that there be in the candidate for the ministry, a zealous study of this thing, an incessant drilling and exposure, if he would arrest attention, and make effective on the heart, the matter he prepares.-Shepard..

Rev. Mr. Shepard, from whose discourse on "The Effective Preacher," the above extract is taken, is professor of Sacred Rhetoric, in the Theological Seminary at Bangor, in Maine. The discourse is published in the American Biblical Repository.

THE UNION OF THE STATESMAN AND THE MAN OF LETTERS.

1. Of the ancient and modern world, the best model of the union of the man of letters and the statesman, was he with whose writings your studies have made you familiarCicero. The most diligent researches, the most varied acquirements, prepared him for the active career of public life, which he mingled with laborious studies, so as never, for a moment, to diminish the vigor of his public character. 2. How often, and how well he served his country, all history attests. When the arts and the arms of Cataline had nearly destroyed the freedom of Rome, it was this great man of letters who threw himself into the midst of the band of desperate conspirators, and by his single intrepidity and eloquence, rescued the republic.

3. When that more noble and dangerous criminal, Cæsar, broke down the public liberty; after vainly striving to resist the tide of infatuation, Cicero retired to his farm, where he composed those deep philosophical works which have been the admiration of all succeeding time.

4. But they could not avert his heart from his country: and on that day, on that very hour, when the dagger of Casca avenged the freedom of Rome, he was in the Senate ;

and the first words of Brutus on raising his bloody steel, were to call on Cicero-the noblest homage this, which patriotism ever paid to letters.

5. Let it not diminish your admiration, that Cicero was proscribed and put to death. They who live for their country must be prepared to die for it. For the same reason, hatred to those who enslaved his country, his great prede. cessor, Demosthenes, shared a similar fate. But both died in their country's service; and their great memories shall endure forever, long after the loftiest structures of the proudest sovereigns,

6. There were kings in Egypt who piled up enormous monuments with the vain hope of immortality. Their follies have survived their history. No man can tell who built the pyramids. But the names of these great martyrs of human liberty, have been in all succeeding time the trumpet call to freedom. Each word which they have spoken is treasured, and has served to rally nations against their oppressors.-N. Biddle.

This is an extract from Mr. Biddle's Address, before the Alumni Association of Nassau Hall, Princeton, delivered September 30, 1835. Learned men are generally, not to say always, true patriots, as were Cicero and Demosthenes. Let American youth walk in their footsteps as statesmen as well as orators.

ELOCUTION OF DIVINELY INSPIRED SPEAKERS.

1. A multitude, even of learned men, have accustomed themselves to consider the sentiments of a public discourse of such comparative importance, as to cast the manner of their delivery altogether into the shade. That the sentiments of a public discourse are important, none will pretend to deny; and that the manner of delivering those sentiments, is equally important, none ought to deny. There is no subject under heaven which furnishes a speaker with such a variety of rich ideas, such motives to move the hu man heart, as does the Christian religion; and yet, perhaps,

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